No. 1067

Fricasseed Oysters or a la Poulette

Huitres Fricassees ou a la Poulette

To Poach Oysters.—Set a saucepan on the hot fire, and place the oysters in it with their own liquor, being careful to stir them about at times to prevent them adhering to the bottom; when firm to the touch, drain them from their liquor. They can also be poached by placing a few at the time between two tin sheets, the top one or cover being smaller than the bottom one, so that the ridge of the top sheet be the same size as the bottom of the lower one. Put the oysters in the bottom buttered sheet with their own liquor, salt, pepper and fresh butter, cover with the smaller sheet turned over, set this on the fire and at the first boil, place it in a slow oven for about ten minutes or until poached, then drain off the liquor.

Oysters Fricasseed or a la Poulette.—Reduce some veloute sauce (No. 415) with oyster liquor, season with salt, pepper and nutmeg, and thicken with egg-yolks diluted in a little cream; incorporate into it a piece of fresh butter, some strained lemon juice and chopped parsley.

← No. 1066 Oysters a la Hollandaise Oysters No. 1068 Oysters, Viennaise →

For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer assumes you have a velouté already made and a cook's judgment about heat. Both assumptions are worth unpacking before you start.

The hinge: oysters set, they do not cookAn oyster is firm within a minute or two of hitting hot liquor, and every second past that point tightens it into rubber. Pull them the moment the edges ruffle and they resist a fingertip; they finish warming in the sauce.
Velouté No. 415A blond roux slackened with veal or chicken stock and simmered until it coats. Ranhofer gives no quantities here; as a working guide, roughly 2 cups of finished velouté, reduced with the strained oyster liquor, will dress two to three dozen oysters.
"A slow oven"Somewhere in the region of 250-325F; the term is imprecise and Ranhofer gives no figure. The two-tin method amounts to a covered shallow pan, and a buttered dish with a tight lid will do the same job; his ten minutes will be ample for all but very large oysters.
The egg-yolk liaisonTwo or three yolks beaten with a few tablespoons of cream, tempered with a ladle of the hot sauce, then stirred back in off direct heat. The sauce must not return to a boil after this or the yolks scramble and it breaks into grit.
Butter and lemon go in lastThe monter au beurre and the strained lemon juice are added away from the fire, off the boil, or the butter separates and the acid thins the liaison. Parsley last of all, so it stays green.
Oyster liquor is saltReduce the liquor with the velouté before seasoning. Shucked oysters vary enormously in salinity, and a sauce salted early can end up inedible after reduction.
BuyingShuck your own if you can, straining the liquor through a cloth to catch shell grit. Tubbed shucked oysters work, but taste the liquor first — some are packed in water rather than their own.
Yield and serviceRanhofer gives no yield or serving vessel here. Reckon on enough for about four as a first course; buttered toast, rice, or puff pastry cases all suit a poulette.

A Little History

The Epicurean (1894) is Charles Ranhofer's record of some thirty years as chef at Delmonico's in New York, and it is organised as a professional reference — hence the cross-reference to velouté No. 415 rather than a written-out sauce. À la poulette denotes a velouté finished with egg yolks, lemon and parsley, a treatment applied across French cookery to mussels, sweetbreads, tripe, mushrooms and feet; the origin of the name is not settled — it has been linked both to the sauce's pale yellow colour and to poulette, a young hen. That Ranhofer gives oysters a whole section of dozens of numbered preparations reflects their standing in nineteenth-century New York, where they were cheap, plentiful from the beds of the Hudson and Long Island Sound, and eaten at every level of the city's table — a situation that overharvesting and pollution had largely ended within a generation of this book's publication.